Director - Engineering - Backend

Director - Engineering - Backend

Organizations everywhere struggle under the crushing costs and complexities of "solutions" that promise to simplify their lives. To create a better experience for their customers and employees. To help them grow. Software is a choice that can make or break a business. Create better or worse experiences. Propel or throttle growth. Business software has become a blocker instead of ways to get work done.
There's another option. Freshworks. With a fresh vision for how the world works.
At Freshworks, we build uncomplicated service software that delivers exceptional customer and employee experiences. Our enterprise-grade solutions are powerful, yet easy to use, and quick to deliver results. Our people-first approach to AI eliminates friction, making employees more effective and organizations more productive. Over 72,000 companies, including Bridgestone, New Balance, Nucor, S&P Global, and Sony Music, trust Freshworks' customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) software to fuel customer loyalty and service efficiency. And, over 4,500 Freshworks employees make this possible, all around the world.
Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.

Overview
We are seeking a dynamic Director of Engineering to lead our Observability and Search Engineering teams, focused on building world-class telemetry and search technologies enhanced by AI. This leader will drive innovation at the intersection of engineering excellence and product impact—ensuring our core platform delivers best-in-class capabilities, performance, and discoverability at scale. The ideal candidate brings a unique blend of engineering leadership, platform-scale systems expertise, and product acumen, able to set strong technical direction while engaging deeply with stakeholders and customers.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Leadership & Strategy: Own and define the long-term vision and roadmap for Observability (metrics, tracing, logging, monitoring, alerting) and Search (indexing, discovery, data pipelines), aligning technology investments with product and business priorities.

• Engineering Execution: Lead high-performing teams of engineers and managers to deliver scalable, secure, and reliable systems. Collaborate with architects to design and implement core observability and search platforms used across business units and product teams.

• Operational Excellence: Ensure high standards for uptime, performance, and scalability. Continuously improve the observability and search platforms while staying aligned with evolving market innovations to maintain enterprise-scale capabilities and efficiency.

• Product Collaboration: Partner with Product Management and Design teams to co-define platform features, internal customer needs, and market opportunities. Translate product requirements into technical execution while contributing to product direction.

• People & Organization: Recruit, mentor, and grow engineering leaders and ICs. Build a diverse, inclusive, and high-performance culture focused on innovation, accountability, and continuous learning.

• Research & Development: Drive initiatives exploring new cloud, AI, and observability techniques. Encourage experimentation and prototyping to validate emerging technologies and approaches.

• 15 years of experience in software engineering and product development, with at least 5 years in large-scale SaaS or platform leadership roles.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Hands-on experience with Observability platforms (e.g., Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Grafana, Datadog) and Search technologies (e.g., Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Lucene, vector databases).
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architectures, distributed systems, and multi-tenant SaaS environments.
• Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional teams and align technical initiatives with business outcomes.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and organizational leadership skills.
• Strategic thinker with a track record of delivering complex, scalable, and high-impact engineering solutions.

Skills Inventory

• Observability & Monitoring Systems (Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Grafana, Datadog)
• Search Platforms & Indexing (Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Lucene, vector databases)
• Cloud-Native & Distributed Systems Architecture
• AI/ML-Powered Search and Anomaly Detection
• Product and Platform Strategy Alignment
• Leadership & Team Development in Multi-Disciplinary Engineering Organizations
• Operational Excellence: Uptime, Performance, Scalability, and Cost Optimization
• Stakeholder Management & Cross-Functional Collaboration

At Freshworks, we have fostered an environment that enables everyone to find their true potential, purpose, and passion, welcoming colleagues of all backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, religions, and ethnicities. We are committed to providing equal opportunity and believe that diversity in the workplace creates a more vibrant, richer environment that boosts the goals of our employees, communities, and business. Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.